The Libyan government has taken correspondents to Zlitan, to see the aftermath of a Nato strike that it says killed 85 civilians. Nato says it hit a military staging base. The BBC’s Matthew Price went along to weigh the competing claims.

A photocopied version of Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea lay in the rubble. Next to it were school books, their pages fluttering in the light breeze. (more…)

BAGHDAD, Aug 1 (Reuters) – The number of civilians killed by violence in Iraq rose to 159 in July from 155 in June, matching January with the highest toll so far for 2011, according to health ministry figures released on Monday.

Violence has dropped sharply since the height of Iraq’s sectarian conflict in 2006-2007, but killings and attacks still happen almost daily as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw more than eight years after the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

For well over a year now, the ACLU has been urging the government to level with the public about the number of civilians that are being killed in its drone strike/targeted killing operations. The government has been tight-lipped — refusing even to confirm or deny the existence of any records relating to civilian casualties in CIA drone strikes. Last month, however, John Brennan, the White House’s top counterterrorism advisor broke this silence, telling reporters that “in the last year ‘there hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we’ve been able to develop.'” (more…)

BAGHDAD (AP) — A combined car bomb and roadside bombing in a town north of Baghdad killed at least 35 people and wounded 47 on Tuesday, Iraqi officials said.

The bombing is the latest in a series of insurgent attacks as the Iraqi government and political factions debate whether to officially request from the United States that some American troops stay in the country past their year-end withdrawal deadline.

In the Syrian city of Ariha, the cherry trees are covered with deep red fruit. It is harvest time and the cherries are sweet, but no one comes to pick them. Two weeks ago, after the regime’s elite troops had transformed peaceful demonstrations in the nearby provincial capital Idlib into bloodbaths, two young men tried to save the cherry harvest. They loaded their small truck full of cherries and took off for the port city of Latakia in western Syria. They didn’t make it very far. A military patrol stopped the two men in front of a sugar refinery and shot them dead.

Nearly three miles above the rugged hills of central Afghanistan, American eyes silently tracked two SUVs and a pickup truck as they snaked down a dirt road in the pre-dawn darkness.

The vehicles, packed with people, were 3 1/2 miles from a dozen U.S. special operations soldiers, who had been dropped into the area hours earlier to root out insurgents. The convoy was closing in on them.

At 6:15 a.m., just before the sun crested the mountains, the convoy halted. (more…)

COTABATO CITY, Philippines. Muslim rebels clashed Sunday with pro-government militias in the southern Filipino province of Maguindanao and conflicting reports said as many as 8 people were killed in the fighting.

The army confirmed the clashes, but would not say if there were casualties in the violence. There was a clash alright, but we cannot give any details as far as casualties are concerned. We are still getting all the facts here, Major Marlowe Patria, a spokesman for the 6th Infantry Division, told the Mindanao Examiner.

He said the fighting occurred in the town of Mangudadatu late in the afternoon and that troops had been sent to the area to contain the violence. Both sides have been fighting over control of lands in the town. (more…)